Basic Usage

The CLI listens on each local port specified by the user, forwarding via the
protocol described below.

Ports may be specified using the following formats:

5000

The client listens on port 5000 locally and forwards to 5000 in the
pod.

6000:5000

The client listens on port 6000 locally and forwards to 5000 in
the pod.

:5000 or 0:5000

The client selects a free local port and forwards to 5000
in the pod.

For example, to listen on ports 5000 and 6000 locally and forward data to and from ports 5000 and 6000 in the pod, run:

$ oc port-forward <pod> 5000 6000

To listen on port 8888 locally and forward to 5000 in the pod, run:

$ oc port-forward <pod> 8888:5000

To listen on a free port locally and forward to 5000 in the pod, run:

$ oc port-forward <pod> :5000

Or, alternatively:

$ oc port-forward <pod> 0:5000

Protocol

Clients initiate port forwarding to a pod by issuing a request to the
Kubernetes API server:

/proxy/minions/<node_name>/portForward/<namespace>/<pod>

In the above URL:

<node_name> is the FQDN of the node.

<namespace> is the namespace of the target pod.

<pod> is the name of the target pod.

For example:

/proxy/minions/node123.openshift.com/portForward/myns/mypod

After sending a port forward request to the API server, the client upgrades the
connection to one that supports multiplexed streams; the current implementation
uses SPDY.

The client creates a stream with the port header containing the target port in
the pod. All data written to the stream is delivered via the Kubelet to the
target pod and port. Similarly, all data sent from the pod for that forwarded
connection is delivered back to the same stream in the client.

The client closes all streams, the upgraded connection, and the underlying
connection when it is finished with the port forwarding request.